Hikmah or Mathnasium: which is right for your child?

Hikmah

Hikmah is a learning centre coming soon to Ottawa for children in Grades 1 to 12, in English and French. It will serve families who want strong foundations in math, reading and writing, and the thinking, creating and leading that AI can’t replace, whether their child needs to catch up, keep up or move ahead.¹⁴

Hikmah

Hikmah’s method will have seven steps. A diagnostic assessment will find where your child is, and a written learning plan will be built around them. The same mentor will guide them, asking more than telling. A missed question will be traced to the skill underneath and fixed there. Short mastery checks, with return visits weeks later, will make skills stick. Projects will put the skills to work for a real audience, and a progress update each month will tell you what changed, why and what’s next.¹³

Hikmah

Hikmah will offer four programs. Elementary (Grades 1 to 6) will build math, reading and writing. Middle years (Grades 7 and 8) will add reasoning and the habits of leading a project. High school (Grades 9 to 12) will cover math and sciences, writing, test preparation and a portfolio. Thinking and leadership (Grades 1 to 12) will teach logic, rhetoric and debate, entrepreneurship and AI literacy, on its own or alongside another program.¹⁴

Hikmah

Every Hikmah program will begin with a diagnostic assessment: short, relaxed tasks in math, reading and writing that show what your child knows, how they learn and where any gap began. It will be free for founding families, and it will lead to a written learning plan you can read.^{13, 17}

Hikmah

A session will start with a short talk with your child’s mentor about school, then one clear goal for the day. Practice will come in short, focused blocks at your child’s pace, and a missed question will send the mentor one skill back. Through the term, sessions will also move a project forward, and at the end of a project your child will share it with an audience. Children who share a gap will be able to work together in a small group. Schedules and hours will be shared with founding families before we open.^{13, 14}

Hikmah

Hikmah’s mentors aren’t hired yet. Each will be chosen against a published standard: depth in their subjects, experience with young people, finding the root of a mistake and asking before telling, patience and reliability, and fluent English or French. Every candidate will pass six steps, including a teaching demonstration, a subject check, references and a police vulnerable sector check, then training and shadowing. Certification with the Ontario College of Teachers will be valued, and your child will keep the same mentor wherever we can.¹⁵

Hikmah

Once a month, your child’s mentor will send you a progress update in plain words: the skills mastered, what comes next and one thing to try at home. You’ll be able to reply to the mentor or book a conversation, and you’ll meet the mentor before the first session.^{14, 15}

Hikmah

The Hikmah platform, in development, will keep a mastery map of every skill and the skills beneath it, and prepare short practice matched to the next skill. Mentors will decide: they will review every plan and will be able to override any suggestion. The tools will give hints and questions, not answers, and generated questions will be checked against the curriculum before your child sees them.¹⁶

Hikmah

Hikmah will teach six capacities that stay human as AI takes on routine work: thinking critically, creating, solving problems, deciding, communicating and leading. They’ll be taught through Socratic questions, logic, rhetoric and ethics, practised in projects for a real audience, and built on strong math, reading and writing. Children will learn to use AI as a tool once they can do the thinking themselves.^{13, 14}

Hikmah

Hikmah’s learning plans and mastery map will be built around the Ontario curriculum expectations for each grade and subject, so work at Hikmah will line up with what your child is taught and assessed on at school.¹⁶

Hikmah

Hikmah’s tuition isn’t set yet. We’ll publish tuition before we open, along with schedules and hours. Founding families will get a free diagnostic assessment, first access to spots and a founding tuition rate, with its terms published before we open.^{14, 17}